The present invention relates to method and apparatus for making wafers from a sheet of bread and relates, more particularly, to the high speed, continuous production of such wafers wherein the wafers possess sharply defined edges, free of fractures or crumbled edges.
In the manufacture of wafers such as those used in the Eucharist it is known to provide thin sheets of unleavened bread from which the communion wafers are punched out on a punch press. In this prior art discontinuous approach to the manufacture of communion wafers, not only is the procedure relatively slow and cumbersome since the product requires considerable manual attention, but, also, the edges of the wafers so produced are subjected to fracturing. This, in turn, causes substantial crumbling of the wafer edges. The irregular edges make the wafers unattractive in appearance and, thus, commercially objectionable. Further, the packages of wafers exhibit the crumbs as loose waste which further renders the wafers commercially inferior.
This aforementioned fracturing is a particular problem with communion wafers and other products produced from unleavened bread, consisting of only a wheat flour and water mixture, since such bread is quite susceptible to crumbling due to its crispness or brittleness. The unleavened bread consists of opposing hard or brittle, but rather smooth or continuous crusts, between which a foraminous, softer center bread layer is situated. This center layer, being porous, yields quite readily under pressure. Thus, by way of demonstration, if one exerts pressure on one outer crust or the other with a sharp tool, the brittle crust breaks since the underlying support, i.e., the porous center readily yields. As the crust breaks, numerous small crust particles are produced since the broken crust actually fractures into many small pieces due to its brittleness. Consequently, in the absence of some control, the edges of a wafer produced on a punch press become flaky, simply because the pressure exerted on the wafer edges during cutting of the wafer out of a sheet of bread are unsupported or unconfined and fractures develop along the opposing crust edges which leads to the aforementioned crumbling of the finished wafers.
It is known to moisten the sheets of bread from which the wafers are formed to reduce the crispness or brittleness of the opposing crusts of the bread during the punch and die operation in an endeavor to avoid the undesirable fracturing of the wafer edges. However, such moisturizing presents certain disadvantages. Firstly, drying time for the wafers formed from moistened bread increases with the amount of moisture present in the wafers. Thus, if sufficient moisture is used to wet the bread to a degree to avoid edge fracturing in wafers formed by the punch and die method, the drying time for the wafers increases to a point where the process becomes uneconomical. The tendency, then, is to punch out the wafers from bread in essentially dry form and, as a consequence, accept the crumbling of the wafer edges. Further, if the sheets of bread are subjected to excessive moisturizing, the bread becomes flaccid and sticky, making it unacceptable for wafer formation.